and he takes it all in and worries about it so I don’t have to think
about it any more and can be happy.”
Emily was capable of expressing ideas that were, on the surface,
entirely childlike but, on reflection, seemed deeper and more mature
than anything expected from a seven-year-old. Sometimes, when he looked
into her dark eyes, Marty felt she was seven going on four hundred, and
he could hardly wait to see just how interesting and complex she was
going to be when she was all grown-up.
After their hair was brushed, the girls climbed into the twin beds, and
their mother tucked the covers around them, kissed them, and wished them
sweet dreams. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” she warned Emily because
the line always elicited a giggle.
As Paige retreated to the doorway, Marty moved a straightbacked chair
from its usual place against the wall and positioned it at the foot
of–and exactly between–the two beds. Except for a miniature
battery-powered reading lamp clipped to his open notebook and a
low-wattage Mickey Mouse luminaria plugged into a wall socket near the
floor, he switched off all the lights. He sat in the chair, held the
notebook at reading distance, and waited until the silence had acquired
that same quality of pleasurable expectation that filled a theater in
the moment when the curtain started to rise.
The mood was set.
This was the happiest part of Marty’s day. Story time. No matter what
else might happen after rising to meet the morning, he could always look
forward to story time.
He wrote the tales himself in a notebook labeled Stories for Charlotte
and Emily, which he might actually publish one day. Or might not.
Every word was a gift to his daughters, so the decision to share the
stories with anyone else would be entirely theirs.
Tonight marked the beginning of a special treat, a story in verse, which
would continue through Christmas Day. Maybe it would go well enough to
help him forget the unsettling events in his office.
“Well, now Thanksgiving is safely past, more turkey eaten this year than
last–‘ “It rhymes!” Charlotte said with delight.
“Sssshhhhh!” Emily admonished her sister.
The rules of story time were few but important, and one of them was that
the two-girl audience could not interrupt mid-sentence or, in the case
of a poem, mid-stanza. Their feedback was valued, their reactions
cherished, but a storyteller must receive his due respect.
He began again, “Well, now Thanksgiving is safely past, more turkey
eaten this year than last, more stuffing stuffed, more yams jammed into
our mouths, and using both hands, coleslaw in slews, biscuits by twos,
all of us too fat to fit in our shoes.” The girls were giggling just
where he wanted them to giggle, an Marty could barely restrain himself
from turning around in his chair to see how Paige liked it so far, as
she had heard none of it until this moment. But no one would respond to
a storyteller who couldn’t wait until the end for his plaudits, an
unshakable air of confidence, whether faked or genuinely felt, was
essential to success.
So let’s look ahead to the big holiday that’s coming, coming, coming our
way.
I’m sure you know just what day I mean.
It’s not Easter Sunday, not Halloween.
It’s not a day to be sad and listless.
I ask you, young ladies, what is it–?”
“It’s Christmas!” Charlotte and Emily answered in unison, and their
immediate response confirmed that he had them in his spell.
“Someday soon, we’ll put up a tree.
Why only one? Maybe two, maybe three!
Deck it with tinsel and baubles bright.
It’ll be an amazing and wonderful sight String colored lights out on the
roof-pray none are broken by anything’s hoof Salt down the shingles to
melt the ice.
If Santa fell, it just wouldn’t be nice.
He might fracture a leg or get a cut, perhaps even break his big jolly
butt.”
He glanced at the girls. Their faces seemed to shine in the shadows.
Without saying a word, they told him, Don’t stop, don’t stop!
God, he loved this. He loved them.